The low-budget English production Is Anybody There? is now reaching screens in the United States, thanks to the presence of Michael Caine in the lead role. The action takes place at Lark Hall, a family-run nursing facility. As one aging resident dies, another arrives to take over the bed—a cycle of life and death accepted mostly with a nod and a shrug.

That here in the deepest water,beyond even rags of light,nearly transparent creatures glitter and flashlike neon signs floatingdown the Las Vegas strip;

That as recently as seven years agoliquid water flowed downan arroyo on Mars,shifting sands and turning small rocks, a patternlike a palm print on a rusting door;

That on a cold nightwater vapor makes visible the breathof small children, who laughto see themselves breathe,

and makes visible the broken breathof old men forgetting their children in refugee camps,and the drying breath of prisoners in stone cells,whose mothers and sisters believe they’re long dead;

That in the beginning the Spiritmoved over the waters like a mighty wind;that the spirit moves through water even now, even nowthrough the straw held to a sick man’s lips,blessed from basin to scallop shellto the forehead of a crying child;That we are from conceptionalmost entirely water.

The way Herod liked to listen to John the Baptist,summoning him from his cell for private chatsbut could make no sense of what he said; the wayFestus kept the apostle Paul locked up for two yearsbecause he enjoyed hearing him talk, although his wordsmade him afraid; the way the German guards, terrifiedby night bombings, sought out Pastor Bonhoeffer,even though he was, by his own account, a providerof cold comfort, writing to a friend, “I can listen all right,but hardly ever find anything to say. Yet perhaps the wayone asks about some things and is silent about othershelps suggest what really matters”—did not stopthe sharp rap on the prison door or the words “get readyto come with us” as if for one more quiet conversationabout what really matters.

Poem

“I have been even as a man that hath no strength, free among the dead . . . Shall thy loving-kindness be showed in the grave?” —Psalm 88

Some days I feel as old as father Abraham,doddering father of a teen-aged daughterwho last week attended her first “real” concert,at the crowded Aragon Ballroom in Uptown.When will my own days feel real again,the frozen clock hands begin to turn again?When will this chemical burning in the veinsstop, and hope, perhaps, be recompensed?I wear this long wool coat against the coldthat hurts me, covered with two scarves,my face covered to avoid any feelingof cobwebs, with their every thread feelinglike a tiny razor blade slicing the skin.There is no ounce of benignity in this feeling.Maybe that is why the winter mask,last week found at Target, most accuratelyresembles a terrorist accessory, all black-hooded with eye slits. Were I to wear it,I would appear on campus like an ISISrecruit, no doubt a proud servantin his mind, clouded by the violenceof the mission and sentence he honors.O the necessary horrors, those airstrikesoccurring in the body’s battleground, leveledat the cells. If I were to wear the black hood,guise of a hangman (not the one hanged),I fear that campus security would target me,bucolic space locked down in emergencyprotocol. That’s all I would be: self-terrorist,strapped with the various wires of my sickness.

Century Marks

Friendly enemies

Jul 16, 2015

On the day the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal, Iowans Bob Vander Plaats and Donna Red Wing had a chance meeting and hugged one another—even though they are culture warriors on opposite sides of the same-sex marriage debate. Vander Plaats heads Family Leader, which supports traditional marriage; he believes Red Wing’s lesbian marriage is unnatural. Red Wing, head of One Iowa, an LGBT rights group, has called Vander Plaats “bigoted” and “cruel.” But a few years ago, at Red Wing’s initiative, the two met for coffee and struck up a friendship. Since then they have been trying to soften the rhetoric of their organizations while still sticking to their principles (Washington Post, July 4).